Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Only three days till Lollapalooza! Last year I attended one day of Lolla—saw Gnarls Barkley, Blackalicious, Flaming Lips, and Kanye—and ever since I left it had been knawing at me that I needed to attend the whole festival in ’07. Once the lineup was announced, I knew...I’d be attending the whole festival in ’07.

About two weeks ago, I called a buddy of mine who lives in Dallas—a buddy who loves Chicago as much as I do AND is just about as big a music nerd as I am—and had this exchange:

Me: Hey, do you want to go to Chicago in two weeks?Buddy: Hell yeah!Me: Don’t you want to know why?Buddy: Sure.Me: Lollapalooza.Buddy: HELL YEAH!

And we’ve been giddy ever since. This guy was one of my three major Road Trip Buddies (along with Hear No Evil) in college, and it’s been a while. So I’ll be picking him up in St. Louis on Thursday and heading on up to Chi-town.

Three days from a music festival, there are only three major things to worry about:

Friday: Mostly sunny, high of 87, 20% chance of rainSaturday: Partly cloudy, high of 88, 20% chance of rain.Sunday: Isolated T-storms, high of 90, 30% chance of rain.

Applying the “The Weather Channel is always wrong” postulate, I’m thinking that either means 100 and sunny (and Chicago Humid) all three days, or Evenly Distributed Thunderstorms all three days. Not sure yet.

If it’s the latter, it won’t be the first time I found myself in a wet festival. During the 2001 Beale Street Music Festival, we ran into a Friday night deluge. Half of Tom Lee Park was pure mud, meaning 125,000 people were crammed into half the space. As it is, Tom Lee Park is extremely narrow and seems about a mile long, so getting from one end of the park to the other took about an hour that weekend. I got stuck listening to half of (ironically) Puddle of Mudd’s set trying to exit the park that Saturday night. It was like the same five minutes on repeat—every song sounded the same, and the lead singer’s only interaction with the crowd was screaming “YEAH! WE’RE GONNA ROCK YOUR F---IN’ C---S OFF! YEAH!” after every song. Ugh.

I also got to witness a weather-induced power outage while John Mayer was halfway through “Your Body is a Wonderland.” Let’s just say that being stuck in a crowd of 15-year old girls who didn’t get their “Wonderland” was FAR more tense than being stuck in a moshing Puddle of Mudd crowd.

In other words, I’m really hoping it doesn't rain.

2) Parking. Taken care of. We’ll be staying with Hear No Evil near Wrigleyville, and he has a weekend visitor parking pass. He lives close to the El. And a Dunkin Donuts. And lots of Wrigleyville bars.

I’m sorry, but all the things out there that need to be addressed in the African-American community and with race relations in this country and the NAACP is spending its time defending Michael Vick who, directly involved or not (right now it looks not not), knowingly provided the space for the dogfights he’s accused of? No wonder Dr. King’s legacy is on life support.

The melting ice on the planet is seen by many as an opportunity to get rich on newly available minerals, and nations (like Russia) are starting to line up to dig in. There’s a treaty that would give structure to that race and possibly prevent some nasty misunderstandings. Guess which country hasn’t signed it, although its Coast Guard is begging it to? Okay, too easy. Guess which right-wing nutcase senator is going to block approval. No, not Coburn. He’s just the junior nutcase from OK. Yes, that’s right, our friend, Inhofe who is apparently claiming we already own all the minerals ourselves or something. If I find it hard to side with the optimists about the future, it’s because I understand the Inhofes and they don’t have a clue. . . . The promise and problems of carbon sequestration in just two paragraphs of this good article on the topic:

The amount of potential storage is vast. Three of the five US geologic storage possibilities under review – salt basins a mile or more deep, mature oil and natural-gas reservoirs, and deep unminable coal seams – could permanently hold at least two centuries' worth of US CO2 emissions – about 6 billion metric tons a year, researchers estimate.

But many steps lie ahead. These geologic formations must be tested for environmental safety and their ability to retain CO2. New power-generation technologies that can economically capture CO2 emissions must be developed. Finally, pipelines and infrastructure must be built to collect CO2 from emitters to move it to geologic storage. (Want more details? See also this article on sequestration in Britain.)

Monday, July 30, 2007

The “stem cell future” is not in doubt. Science will max them out. Just not in the US, with any of the resulting economic or maybe even health benefits for the people of this nation. Just like the future of science and the Renaissance went north in Europe after the religious zealot crackdown in Italy, we’ll see the lights go on elsewhere on the planet while we’re turning them off here.

Human activity, a warmer sea, changing wind patterns, twice the number of hurricanes over the last century. Sounds about right. . . . Let’s give credit when it’s due. The Chinese authorities are apparently going to make getting loans harder for heavy polluters. That’s what they’re saying, anyway. When the polluters claim they can’t meet the conditions to reduce pollution and the nation’s econ output slackens and social upheaval results, well, we’ll see how serious they really are. . . . A biofuel that might actually be worth it? Sounds like it may be possible. A company gearing up to produce. . . . Bunch of good stuff over at Climate Progress, including GM’s latest immoral “greenwashing” effort, (not coincidentally) “who killed the electric car?”, Science declaring global warming “game over,” and why “geo-engineering” should be on no menu. . . . I used to work in a state budget office and take public admin seminars at the same time. Heard a lot about the theory and practice of “efficiency” as the byword for budgeting, cutting “waste” which was the same as redundancy. As this post makes clear, that’s the byword for everything these days, and, as I thought at the time when I was being forced to look for and eliminate redundancy, it’s short-sighted and dangerous. The world is teeming with redundancy in order to max out on “resiliency” and the ability to adapt. IOW, avoid the “one best way” that might prove extremely vulnerable some day and leave you without viable alternatives to help you cope. And it looks like we’re adopting the same “efficient” orientation for our actions to deal with global warming. What’s that “those who don’t learn from history” thing? . . .

The new British PM says the world owes the US a debt for backing off its pursuit of Osama, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban to start a pointless and cancerous war in Iraq . . . oh, wait, no, he’s saying for taking the lead in fighting international terrorism. Looks like the British have another tool for a leader.

What if the US had lost the Revolution? Are we Canada? Are we just a younger version of America (i.e. did we just win independence later on)? Would slavery have ended sooner? Would we actually have a good health care system? I have no answers (do I ever?), but it's interesting to ponder...

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Elsewhere I've critiqued two of Jonathan Tropper's earlier novels, The Book of Joeand Everything Changes. Favorably. Tropper is one of the few US lad-kit writers with a flair for it, as evident by Tobey Maguire signing on to to EC in a movie form sometime soon at a theater near you. Since I wrote that review, I hunted down Tropper's first published novel, Plan B, the tender story of long-time friends doing an intervention by kidnapping their now movie star friend and holding him hostage while hilarity and romance ensue. It's actually good.

So I was looking forward to his finishing his latest, How to Talk to a Widower, which also has movie written all over it. Read it in half a day, not disappointed at all. By now, Tropper's books all have familiar elements that resonate despite the familiarity--adrift young man trying to grapple with the crap reality is dealing, women you'd fall for (even the ones thrown away), family issues with a cast of irregular characters, effective and usually unexpected violence--covered generously with both melancholy and in the end uncertain hope along with great dialogue and laugh-out-loud situations.

You may not see how you'd laugh out loud about a story of a guy who fell hopelessly for a vibrant, talented, and of course beautiful woman 11 years older who dies (not a spoiler--did you read the title???) and leaves him in effect with her teenage son, but you do. As usual, there's the colorful family, as mentioned, and enough moral vacillation and tussling with self-absorption by most concerned to make you think for a while. Of course, there's the predictable "back in the dating pool" run of bad blind dates, but Tropper plays them well, delivering most as a montage and making the hero one himself in one of the scenes that will play funniest in the movie.

Tropper's not Shakespeare or even Richard Russo, but he's talented, readable, and memorable. Most of all, when you're done, you immediately start getting impatient for his next one. According to an interview I read, it's supposed to be about divorce, which he should make touching and hilarious. Hurry up and get that thing finished, Tropper.

Friday, July 27, 2007

I stopped reading the putrid Robert Samuelson a couple of decades back (he was one of the earliest signs of the media’s death spiral), but it’s clear he hasn’t gotten any brighter from this wonderful takedown of him by David Roberts and links at Grist, who also manage to put a bullet into the almost equally moronic Gregg Easterbrook. Both of those self-satisfied wise men will be early entrants into the Hall of Fame for the Unserious. . . . Joseph Romm sets out the necessary criteria for truly effective carbon offsets here at Climate Progress. . . . The Christian Science Monitor continues its zapping of corn ethanol with a good story on the unintended consequences of the heedless ramping up we’ve been doing. . . . Remember the story yesterday on how diesel fumes can lead to heart problems? Well, in CA, they start with plain old breathing. So let’s all jump on that bandwagon, shall we? . . . Speaking of CA, you know which state comes in behind it in electricity generated from solar panels? Don’t even pretend you said NJ. . . . The intricacies and permutations of setting up local “community wind projects” here. . . .Average temps in AK (Alaska, not Arkansas) up over 2 degrees in the last 30 years. That may sound like good news for Alaskans wanting tans, except the frozen ground they’ve built on is thawing. Not cool.

Not only is Barry Bonds unnatural, he’s stupid. He embodies (sorry) that old joke about how unfair it was to get into a battle of wits with an unarmed man. He insults Bob Costas after Costas points out the obvious about Bonds’ steroidal corpus. Calls Costas a “little midget who knows nothing about baseball.” Costas, who would have a Ph.D. in baseball if one were offered (hmm, I might go back to college for that), gave a response that immediately should school Bonds on being a human, if Bonds were capable of learning anything: "As anyone can plainly see, I'm 5-6 1/2 and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally.” Want proof that Costas cleaned Bonds’ clock? Here’s Bonds’ comeback: Bonds responded, "How do you know?" before going on to say he didn't care. Huh??? And of course Costas showed the class that Bonds wouldn’t recognize if it came up to him and said, “Hi, I’m Class”:

"I've actually always had a pretty cordial relationship with Barry," Costas said. "I have no ill feelings toward him personally. I regard him as one of the greatest players of all time who got an inauthentic boost and then became a superhuman player. I wish him no ill whatsoever."

Costas said he understood why Bonds might have denigrated him.

"He's under tremendous scrutiny and some pressure. It's no big deal," Costas said. "This is a consequence of doing your job, and I've never tried to do my job in any case with the intention of calling attention to myself. I think if people watch the program, they can judge for themselves."Sometime soon yet another cap on the cynical and unserious country in which I live will arrive when the media go ga-ga over a cheater breaking a record earned by a fine and honorable sportsman. Barry Bonds is a tumor on any claim to a decent society and we succor and extol him. And Bob Costas just goes on his way, providing integrity and honesty, far less valued today than a tainted homerun ball.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Anyone who’s had a loved one with Alzheimer’s knows what the disease does to the victim and the family. This article is a very thorough and uplifting piece for those who would like a more hopeful future.

Nice overview of the way water technologies may revitalize floundering urban economies, especially those around the Great Lakes. Good update on where those techs may be heading, too. Sounds like the place to put some money if you could figure out which ones will be the ones to take off. . . . From the land that gave us Napoleon, a deal to give Libya a nuclear reactor that could supply material to Kaddafi for weapons. Good plan as usual there, Frenchies. Australia, meanwhile, is thinking about uranium sales to India, you know, that country most likely with Pakistan to start the first full-scale nuclear war. At least they can blame an idiot PM. France isn’t that well off. . . . “Eco-Towns.” Pretty interesting idea. Not in the US, of course, but still interesting. . . . Again, truly hard for me to get on board bailing out a nation like this on its screwed up industrial system rather than playing hard ball. A nation like this is more prone to exploit civility than to succumb to it. . . . .The energy blog at the Christian Science Monitor weighs in with a good counterbalance to all the pro-ethanol hype, particularly noting how all the opportunistic policymakers ushering subsidies to corn-based ethanol are keeping the market from finding a more realistic price for both the resulting fuel and for the food we’re giving up. . . . Before everyone goes running to diesel to bail us out supposedly, maybe we should take note of this finding that diesel fumes actually help clog arteries. Of course, that would mean more heart attacks, strokes, and deaths, which would lower population, which would lessen energy and water use . . . hmm, maybe it’s not a bad idea, after all.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A man walked up to Dick Cheney, calmly told him he thought his Iraq policy was reprehensible, and walked away. A few minutes later he was arrested by the Secret Service, in front of his 8-year-old son, for "assault".

When he asked what would happen to his child, the Secret Service said, "He can be sent to Child Services."

a) Hillary is not the most electable...sweet jesus, no. She's the one candidate that conservatives will show up to vote against even if they're completely and totally uninspired by their own set of candidates.

b) If Hillary wins, Paul Begala and James Carville are once again the spokesmen of the Democratic Party again. Seriously, this is what we are supposed to want?

Steve Soto is normally one of the shrewder bloggers, but he's come out for Hillary because she's most electable and offers as proof of his wisdom the fact that in 2004 he supported John Kerry for the same reason. And she, like Kerry, will be able to deal effectively with the Repub attacks in the coming campaign.

Or has every sport taken down by a drug scandal started with someone raising the possibility and then members of the said sport denying that anything, anything like that could ever happen and demanding the accuser reveal everything possible or shut up, like talking about the chances hurts anything? Looks like golf is the next one.

Quote of the Day:

"Here's a good rule of thumb, cable news networks: If O.J. goes to Anna Nicole Smith's grave and digs up her body, dresses it like Paris Hilton, and then mails it to Michael Jackson, you can consider that news. If he simply goes down to the end of his driveway to get his mail, it isn't."

-- Bob Sassone, TV Squad

"If we don't do something, by 2050, all the polar bears will be gone. That's where Santa Claus lives, man. That's a bummer."